I bought my new harddrive a few months ago when there were no reviews of the new generation of harddrives, and i decided to go for the Spinpoint. Seems like I made the right choice then, based on the reviews so far!

As the double platter P120 was only slightly louder than a single platter P80 used for comparrison I susspect the larger, double platter P80s may be louder or of similar noise levels to the P120. Would this be a reasonable conclusion?

Yes, probably. At some point I may yank the P80 (160GB) in my system for a direct comparison, but until then you can probably consider them pretty close.

I also tried enabling AAM, but to no difference. Maybe the "softseek" is just a bit different so none of the usual programs work? Perhaps you need some utility from Samsung to enable it, or it may well already be enabled.

I also tried enabling AAM, but to no difference. Maybe the "softseek" is just a bit different so none of the usual programs work? Perhaps you need some utility from Samsung to enable it, or it may well already be enabled.

AAM does have an effect. The reduction in power consumption and the test on the vibration box confirmed that. However, it's effect on the airborne acoustics is almost nothing; the reduction is almost entirely in vibration and whatever noise it causes. Also, keep in mind that it's seeks without AAM are already at a level of noise that is at or below most other drive with AAM.

nbac wrote:

Is this a trend? First the 7200.7 and now the P120.

No. The 7200.7 doesn't implement AAM at all. The P120 implements it; it just doesn't do much.

I also tried enabling AAM, but to no difference. Maybe the "softseek" is just a bit different so none of the usual programs work? Perhaps you need some utility from Samsung to enable it, or it may well already be enabled.

AAM does have an effect. The reduction in power consumption and the test on the vibration box confirmed that. However, it's effect on the airborne acoustics is almost nothing; the reduction is almost entirely in vibration and whatever noise it causes. Also, keep in mind that it's seeks without AAM are already at a level of noise that is at or below most other drive with AAM.

Yeah, perhaps on the vibration and power consumption. When I enabled it at home, I couldn't tell the difference from before, the seeks were at the same level. With my DM9 though, it was like night and day! It went from pre-1990's era seeks, to almost no seek noise at all.

Great review but i've got one question!
Is there going to be any difference in noise between the 200GB and the 250 as the only differenve between them is the higher density!
I think I can now change my whining barracudaIV but I would like to see a review of the 2 platter Hitachi deskstar 250GB.
Will this be soon?

Great review but i've got one question!Is there going to be any difference in noise between the 200GB and the 250 as the only differenve between them is the higher density!

I can't think of any reason why they would sound different. Usually, differences in noise within a product line are the result of a different number of platters, but the 200 and 250 GB lines both have two platters, so there should be no difference. Only time will tell though...

winguy wrote:

What about seek time? Is seek time affected with AAM enabled?

The short answer to your question is yes: AAM almost always affects seek time. However, I suspect what you are really asking is how much it is affected, and I don't know the answer to that. We don't generally do performance testing on hard drives, for reasons outlined in our methodology article.

I bought the P120 250GB last week to plug it on my ASUS K8V SE Deluxe, but it took me a while to figure out how to be able to boot on it.

I could install Windows XP by installing VIA SATA drivers (using F6 on install), but then then BIOS wouldn't see the drive and I couldn't boot on it.

The reason is that curiously, the bios of my SATA controller only detects the drive if it's a SATA 150... but still, the disk works fine on windows...

The only way to boot on my P120 was to use a jumper to set it in SATA 150 mode (there is a small note in the drive's box explaining how to do that...). So now the drive works fine, but I'm disappointed I can't use it in native SATA 300!

I bought the P120 250GB last week to plug it on my ASUS K8V SE Deluxe, but it took me a while to figure out how to be able to boot on it.

I could install Windows XP by installing VIA SATA drivers (using F6 on install), but then then BIOS wouldn't see the drive and I couldn't boot on it.

The reason is that curiously, the bios of my SATA controller only detects the drive if it's a SATA 150... but still, the disk works fine on windows...

The only way to boot on my P120 was to use a jumper to set it in SATA 150 mode (there is a small note in the drive's box explaining how to do that...). So now the drive works fine, but I'm disappointed I can't use it in native SATA 300!

That is not very surprising since your mainboard does not support SATA300!

You're right, they are SATA compatible (at least, they seem to be in Windows), but that still doesn't mean you can run it in SATA 300 mode natively. If your disc controller only supports the first version of SATA, the drive will run in that mode, no matter what your jumper settings are.

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